MR VOGEL'S FINANCIAL SCHEME.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 885, 6 December 1870, Page 2

MR VOGEL'S FINANCIAL SCHEME.

£homb news.] The proposition of Mr Julius Vogel to raise on loan for the New Zealand Colo* niesthe sum of £10,000,000, to be expended on immigration and public works, has met with a considerable amount of comment from colonists and others. A recent writer on the subject says;-—•* We are now reaching that stage in the whirligig of time when such Finance Ministers as Mr Vogel become the pets of the populace ; when the foundations are laid for the erection of the deceptive-looking paper edifices which would vanish like a phateau en, Espagne did they not leave the debris of broken champagne bottles, of oyster-shells, empty-tins, and rummaged packages to add to the desolation and tell the sad tale to the then starving spectator of former riot and folly. How such periods, so well known, so fully described, so marked with disaster, should be enabled to' return as regularly as a postman calls on well-ordered rounds, is a marvel, but nevertheless a fact. Every symptom shown in New Zealand has been frequently seen in other Colonies. The grand idea, the popular enthusiasm, the return of a House of Bepresentatives pledged to its execution, the unparalleled prosperity—and the mighty smash J 5 * After referring to the expenditure of millions of English money on the construction of Canadian railways, and the collapse that followed, he proceeds : —" If the scheme of the Finance Minister can be carried out, New Zealand will pass from a period of pleasant intoxication to to the usual awakening after excesses. But there are two sides to such a financial arrangement. The New Zealand scheme requires a lender as well as a borrower, and the latter party to the contract is not likely to be forthcoming. Ten millions sterling for New Zealand as an additional loan !—the very idea is preposterous. Does Mr Vogel suppose that the problem of social advancement can thus be solved ? Does he think that by pouring in people and constructing roads and railways that be can make a nation to shoulder and refund the heavy burden of at once turning a waste into a garden, a swamp into a city? or that new towns are to grow up and people settle as he may map and decree ? The first effect he may reckon on for his ten millions sterling will be to bring along, like vultures to the carrion, plotters and schemers; to substitute for honest trade and labour jobbery and speculation; to inaugurate a system of fraud and lying ; a * real estate' inflation and joint-stock mania. Hundreds of thousands will be stolen; millions will be misdirected; jealousy and strife between tbe Provinces will be inaugurated; the country will soon be glutted with labour, and the stream will rapidly flow away to Australia, California, or the best markets within reach; and when the balloon collapses there will follow a period of great prostration, after which a curious traveller may speculate on the ruins of fine roads through the wastes, and wonder that it was never Ipown that the Romans j n ancient days had occupied New Zealand. There is one effect even more certain than any of these others—that the result will be a riddance to New Zealand of njany of its clever schemers. The most eager advocates of the finance Minister's projected loan, we feel certain, are those who are preparing to profit by the false prosperity they know it would generate, 'JWn lots, in choice localities, would rise to fahulous prices; an era of reckless buying and selling would supervene, and a free indulgence in luxuries would make the fortunes of early importers. But these men know also what the end would be ? and whilst employing their breath to waft aloft the commercial bills of tbe Colony, they would be all the time filling their pockets with coin of the realm, and they would be the less hampered in their movements in that the plan of action embraced as its final result their retirement from the Colony with their plunder. Jlowever despondingly the colonists might sing ' farewell, ye visioned hopes of bliss,' these gentlemen would be far beyond the strain in their pleasant -English retreats ; groqse-shooting in the autumn, hunting in the winter, figuring in liottenrow with the budding leaves of spring, and, perhaps, descanting on finance from their places ixi Parliament to a House whose attention is commanded by those who, in their own success, have proved their superior aptitude." Such writing may fairly enough claim a place among